Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Our 16th post about apps we've made use of, that others may like to try too. The other posts can be found here.
Again, the links below are to Apple's App Store. This is because we use
iOS devices in school. Many of these apps are available on Android too.

Saturday, 25 March 2017

Have you been watching ITV's new quiz show, '5 Gold Rings'? It's great, we really like it. Watched the first episode, shouted at the TV, discussed (little left, bit down, bit more up...) and decided we'd watch again. Then, second episode, we discovered the app - we could play too while watching the contestants! Then, of course (like we do), we thought of a way to get it into class...

Print out the picture with a missing part on paper, provide children with a pen and something circular and ask them to draw a circle where they thing the target is located. To allow children to check their work, have the answer printed on a piece of OHT paper that they can lay over their answer to see how they did.

Guess Compared to Answer

Both, Side by Side

As I said, the opportunities for this are endless. But, here are some example questions and answers. Included there are: the clock face shown above, 'find Northern Ireland', 'locate the amber traffic light' and 'Where's the top of the A?'.

Thursday, 23 March 2017

At the weekend, I watched an animation of 'Papa, Please Get The Moon For Me' for the first time. As I watched it with my own children at home, it struck a chord with me as my class are currently studying a unit in science about the Earth, Sun, Moon and our Solar System. So, today, I played the animation for my class. After I'd played it, I played it a second time and asked the children to write down anything in the video they thought was fictional rather than scientific fact.

In future years, I might use this task as a pre and post assessment. What do they think is fictional before some teaching and then afterwards. Nice story, nice animation and some good science learning...

Wednesday, 22 March 2017

Again some inspiration from the TV series Taskmaster. We've had success in the past with the 'Backwards Video Task'. In the most recent series, the contestants were asked to film something that when sped up or slowed down made it more interesting or amusing.

Again like before, use it as a group work and/or ICT task. Both iMovie and Movie Maker allow speeding up or slowing down a clip and apps can be purchased to do the same too.

Tuesday, 21 March 2017

Find a Tweet or two (with no swearing or major punctuation/grammar errors*) and ask the children to identify the parts of speech contained in it. They'll be short texts as they've got to be within 140 characters.

In this example, I found a Tweet with the word 'stamp' in it:

Have this random stamp on my arm and I don't know where how or when I got it

Friday, 3 March 2017

Here's an idea to help with those practical lessons. Particularly art, DT and so on...

You know, sewing where half the class want their needle rethreading, DT where everyone needs to use the glue gun and similar occurrences.

It uses the system I first came across as a child in Clarks. You go in the shop, take a ticket with a number on and then wait. In an orderly fashion, those with tickets are seen. The shop assistant decides when they next see someone.

In the classroom, put up five Post-It Notes with the numbers 1-5 on them. If someone needs help from the teacher, they take a number and see what else they can get on with. In order, the teacher calls out which number they will see next (in a "Cashier number 4 please" voice of course!). When the child has been seen, they put their number back for someone else to use. If there are more than one adult in the room, each adult has their own coloured Post-It.